I grabbed this link from GodBeGone and without even reading the actual post, I was WTF’n at the YouTube video. The first frame clearly states there is a growing penis black market among lesbians. Just what would this black market look like? I certainly would not want to see it.
(Yes, I’m aware this is a spoof)
Tags: comedyNo Comments.
I came across this article at Corante detailing how “vitamins counteract benefits of exercise”. Now, I may not have done much exercising lately but 10 years ago, I was a trainer and nutritionist and I heavily preached taking vitamins to supplement exercise. Hell, all trainers, dietitians, doctors, nutritionists, and supplement companies do too! And have been for decades. What I want to know is why this new revelation might be important. I, frankly, think it’s a load of bollocks because the test subjects didn’t take recommended values of two specific vitamins, which were no doubt specially selected for the test.
Participants took 10000mg of Vitamin C (yes, a full gram) and 400 IU of vitamin E. Now, the post ends up not talking about vitamin E’s effects whatsoever for some odd reason and instead focuses entirely on vitamin C. The paper and the author — an organic chemist — suggests that vitamin C is inhibiting muscular firing and muscular oxygen production/consumption. Now, is this going to be true when someone takes the recommended value of vitamin C? The patients were taking 1000mg which is actually 1667% RDV. Truthfully, I have a feeling that this much vitamin C was the cause of the observed effects and not the fact that vitamin C itself is the sole cause. Less than 100mg is the RDV of vitamin C and while incredibly difficult to get under doses of a few hundred milligrams, I think focusing on 1000mg was overkill for the entire experiment. Scientists and trainers know that once your body can no longer absorb something, it simply excretes it. In this case, excess vitamin C would simply be sweated out or urinated out.
However, Dr. Lowe didn’t see any of these issues with this study and instead went on to say that the findings were seemingly correct and in fact validate another paper from last year regarding — again, suspiciously — vitamin C inhibiting vascular capacity and growth. I find all of this suspect given that the ingested vitamin is taken in a much higher capacity than our body is known to be able to process. Many of these points are also brought up in the comments without reply from the author. I think this type of experimentation is excellent for understanding exactly what we need and what we should be doing but not when its entire premise is flawed from the beginning. I find it also quite specious that a chemist is backing this up entirely without seeing these same flaws.
Tags: chemisty · exercise · scienceNo Comments.
I just read about Better Place and their special EV cars and battery packs, along with their plans to gleefully roll out charging/swapping stations across the world (hopefully) in the latest GOOD Magazine (GOOD015). While the entire plan was very optimistic, from the article, that’s all it had going for it: optimism. And possibly butterflies. But one thing that stood out to me in the article was that they had no working prototypes at the time. That has now changed as they have a single working prototype out in the wild in Yokohama, Japan. Green Inc over at NYT (amongst places) has the newly released YouTube video from Better Place along with a nice write up about the whole process.
However, the video brought up more questions than it answered for me. Originally, I suspected that the charging stations would just do a battery pack swap, which is still what they do. But what I had not anticipated was that Better Place is essentially swapping out the entire electric drivetrain of the vehicle for one that’s fully charged. If you ask me, that’s highly inefficient and certainly lends itself to a longer swap time. What I had envisioned was simply dropping the butt out of the vehicle and replacing it since that is where the batteries resides in other EVs/hybrids (OK, they’re in the trunk but I think butt is more descriptive). This would certainly be smaller than what they’re doing now and could certainly be done more quickly. A quicker turnaround time would save everybody both time and money.
What is going to be done to keep the cost down? Currently, each station costs a cool half a million dollars. And does that price include the station, charging bays, and batteries or will extra batteries incur an extra cost? Will any of the charging technology be used to feed back into the grid in order to lower monthly utilities bills? Really, I could probably think of a dozen more questions but then my coworkers may start to wonder why I’m not working instead.
I like Better Place’s idea, it’s been bandied around for years but nothing has really come of it and with the West’s new found enthusiasm about caring about the environment, it may actually come to fruition and sweep the globe. We’ll know much more in 2012 or 2013 after their Israeli test stations work out the bugs.
Tags: better place · electric car · evNo Comments.
As I was skimming through a buttload of RSS feeds that I sore need to catch up on, I came across this “hierarchy of beards” thing. I don’t remember where I found it but I thought it was mostly neat. It would have been a lot cooler if it was a real display of beards with their actual names and not cutesy things like the “Hyneman” (after Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters) or the “Comic-Con” (San Diego Comic Con) and other silly names like that. I have no idea why they came up with such absurd names but I do like the overall design of the poster, very Victorian. This has fed my beardy desires for today.
Tags: beardsNo Comments.
I know, this has been dead for a couple of weeks while I finished up school. The semester’s finally over and I can’t wait to start doing non-school things for a change. The weather’s been getting better or worse, depending on how you look at it. There’s been very little rain this spring, which is very odd, but the temperatures aren’t insanely hot like they were last year either. The motorcycle rides have been great but still, I wish it would rain so I could test out my rain suit.
Since school’s over, there are some camping trips planned and some motorcycle runs planned as well. Hopefully we can start frequenting some local bike nights at bars which should be fun. There’s one tonight but I don’t think we’ll be going just yet. However, camping should be happening much sooner than biker bars. I’ve got trip planned for Bahia Honda down in the Keys in the next 3 weeks or so and I’m stoked for it. Finally, we get to go to the Keys and fish and camp, should be AWESOME!
What else does the summer hold? I’m not sure but we’re looking forward to it. I’ve got some gardening ideas I want to try, along with some guerilla gardening ideas for our apartment complex. For as much money as this place makes per month, they do one of the worst landscaping jobs I’ve ever seen. The landscapers don’t come by as much as they used to — back when the place actually looked nice — and most of the sprinkler heads are broken which they don’t seem to care about. Maybe we’ll do something about that,.
I need to get back to work but this is hilarious: texts from last night.
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Jess and myself went to Chicago this weekend for the 90 Day Delinquents shadowcast for Repo: The Genetic Opera. The shadowcast was a blast and was surprisingly better than I expected. There were some pretty good gags, you can see that in the videos posted @ Myspace.
Chicago was fun…and cold. Having never stepped foot outside O’Hare before this weekend, I did not know how windy that city really was. With all the downtown roads acting as giant wind tunnels, it certainly was gusty. We did as much tourist-y stuff as we could fit in on Saturday. Walked the Magnificent Mile, photographed Sears Tower, all that stuff. Since we were staying on Delaware Place, I was shocked at the lack of grocery stores and mini-marts within a few blocks of our hotel. I think I saw two markets within 4 blocks of our hotel. Hopefully next time, we can go and be real tourists and spend more time walking around — and not getting raped for taxi fares.
We did manage to go to The Alley, which has to be the store that inspired Hot Topic. It was all kitschy punk and goth stuff, but it seemed to lack emotion or conviction. To me, it felt like nothing more than a big Hot Topic. If that’s what a “real” punk store is like, I’ll just continue to not go to them. $90 for a Fender rockabilly shirt? Talk about robbery. Ah well, it was still an experience to see and at least the people working there were nice, albeit seemingly disconnected and bored.
Our photo shoot for 90 Day Delinquents did get quashed by our original effects artist not being able to make it and then the lack of a fixed location didn’t help any. The shots we did manage to get turned out well for what we had to work with. There’s minor editing that needs to happen to remove a glaring dust spot from our mirror but other than that, it’s minor levels and tonal adjustments that need to be made. I was kind of ambivalent about the whole thing since we ended up scrapping most of the original ideas in order to just get it done and over with.
Tags: chicago · repo · tripNo Comments.
Aside from raining all last week and all day Saturday, the weekend turned out great. We go to go on our first poker run! It was the first annual Boca Raton American Cancer Society Ride For Strides poker run and it was a blast. Except the sore butts and sunburned skin, that is. The run was almost ruined by the weather except it was sunny and in the 70s all day Sunday with isolated showers. Those isolated showers came about an hour after we got home from the run and went all night. I don’t think that 8 hours of rain is “isolated” by any means.
There were not as many riders as expected but that was because of the rain. The turnout was still fairly good for a first year poker run that happened to coincide with a terrible week of weather. I believe around 100 bikes registered although, not all of them finished at the end. I know that some of the firefighters we rode with did not make it to the final stop. Hopefully they have it again next year and more people show up! Since it was a poker run, we played 6 hands of poker and had absolutely nothing. In fact, there was one good hand I believe, a four-of-a-kind. However, Jess did win the 50/50 raffle and won $70! That helped pay for groceries tonight, which was super awesome.
The ride itself was very nice, most of the travel was up and down A1A for some gorgeous scenery. We didn’t take many pictures because Jess did not feel so comfortable but there will be some up soon from the some of the stops. I did get to wear my new Fieldsheer mesh jacket and it worked WONDERFULLY. With a name like “High Temp Mesh Jacket”, you figure that a video review of the jacket would at least mention the fact that it’s extremely well ventilated but the one at Motorcycle Superstore leaves that little tidbit out. Despite the name, not all mesh jackets flow air properly. However, mine definitely does! Even tonight as I was riding home from school with my backpack on, I was very cool with my back a little warm because of the lack of air under the pack.
But tonight was a special night for me. It’s the first time I ever ran out of gas while on a ride. It was also the first time my battery died. Both on the side of I-95, not the safest place I want to wait for my girlfriend to bring me gas. Or have to jump my bike off. Running out of gas while on the way to get gas is ironic enough but then having my battery die because of keeping the lights on for safety is just sucky. At the point I realized that the battery was dead, I was ready for someone to just run into the bike and total it, I was so frustrated. Then the insurance I bought last week would have already paid itself off and I would have had a bigger bike! It was embarrassing but at least I know now when I need to get gas when running on the reserve and to never leave the running lights on for more than 20 minutes. I should probably get a new battery and fuel filter now that I’ve run the bike into the ground, essentially. I can’t believe it took me almost 90 minutes to get back home after leaving school tonight. I’ll know better next time!
Right now, I need to get to bed. Another fun day of work and school tomorrow.
Tags: breast cancer · motorcycle · poker run1 Comment
So, my site has been unavailable for almost 4 days now and I had no idea. I’ve been way too busy entertaining company for two weeks to really pay that much attention. Now I feel really dumb because of that and I was going to update earlier this week but did not do so, and now that I have I realize why my stats dropped to zero recently. Whoops!
I got a new Dell Mini 9 last week and I’m still getting used to the keyboard. The laptop itself is great. Small and very lightweight with a fantastic screen and fairly decent webcam but it’s hard getting used to this extremely non-standard keyboard. I’m still hitting Enter because I think it’s the apostrophe key since I have no idea why Dell thought it was a smart idea to move the key to beside the miniscule arrow keys instead of making the Enter key a half-sized key so the apostrophe would be in its normal place. Really, that’s my only kvetch about this thing, besides the default Dell-branded Ubuntu 8.04 installation they have. It’s horrifically out of date (as a one year old OS, Dell offers no official updates from Canonical for it! And it has plenty of updates), cluttered, and far more locked down than needed with some serious user interface issues. I’ve been running Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackelope Alpha5 since I got the Mini and it’s so much nicer than 7.04 that’s on my 700m and much better to use than Dell’s own 8.04.
It’s been raining for almost two days straight now, fairly unusual for this time of year. Normally it just rains for an hour or two a day everyday, but it’s been raining solidly since mid-day March 17. While the rain is very much needed, I could have used a real heads-up last night when I went out for St. Patrick’s Day and ended up riding home in a downpour . That was bearable except for my soaking wet legs and the stinging rain on my face. However, it was a great excuse to thoroughly dry the bike and re-lube the chain with my homemade bike stand. I really would not mind a hydraulic bike table but with the room I have, this homemade stand works perfectly.
This weekend is supposed to be the 1st annual American Cancer Society Ride for Strides Breast Cancer poker run on 22 March 2009 at the Starbucks at 5050 Town Center Drive, Boca Raton, FL. However, I know the weather is of great concern. There’s a 30% chance of rain forecasted for Sunday but it was a 30% chance all day yesterday and it rained just about all day. I wish the Myspace page for this had a update instead of a phone number, I don’t really feel like calling this random guy when he could just post on Myspace and update a lot more people with a lot less hassle.
Ah well, such is life. I think it’s time to go charge up the Mini and watch some TV.
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Kind of like I had last year where I took an entire week off from work and was absolutely worthless. Of course, the pile of work I had to handle even while on vacation wasn’t all that pleasurable, nor was the pile that I came back to. However, this year’s break is slightly different. While it started yesterday, we had a review session for our Anthropology of Religion midterm that’s next Monday. Given the arousing amount of zero questions actually asked about the midterm, everyone was there to see what Professor Keshodkar had to say about our essay based on the movie Groundhog Day. That’s certainly why I went. But I also got to take a quick, but cold, jaunt on the bike with my new Skid Lid half helmet along with some ear plugs to test out whether the helmet would lift off my head at 65MPH (it didn’t, unlike the Bell Drifter I owned for 15 hours did) and if the ear plugs significantly cut down on wind noise (they do!).
The rest of my spring break will be spent working tomorrow and then chilling out with my dad and girlfriend until I go back to work on Tuesday. My dad and I will still be busy building a new spice rack to replace the one we made last year, building a cheap-o bike lift so I can change the oil on the bike, and re-arranging our garage with new goodies. I’m so excited, I finally get to perform some real maintenance on my motorcycle that’s badly needed. Most glaringly is the chain, which probably hasn’t been cleaned/lubed in years if ever. The sideplates are a bit rusty but that could just be built up grime, but it definitely does need a thorough cleaning. Luckily, soybean-based Bean Clean is a seriously powerful degreaser. I had strong doubts whether it would perform as well as Simple Green or other environmentally-friendly cleaners would but it’s excellent.
I used it to clean a belt protector from our Focus and it looks almost brand new after years of road grime and oil baking onto it. My only gripe with Bean Clean is the fact that the spray is so powerful, you’ll go through an entire can pretty quickly. I must have used it for less than 5 minutes and the can felt much lighter than before I used it. That does not bode well for having to clean an entire 130 link chain plus sprocket. I won’t mind ordering a 4 pack from Applied Ingenuity but I do hope that their future package revisions will utilize less spray in order to both use less of the product — thereby using less resources for packaging and shipping and less soybean resources — and prolong time between purchase. Again, it’s not the price per can that’s an issue. If you’re using this stuff routinely to clean, you’ll end up ordering quite often simply because the spray nozzle is so powerful.
Aside from that, I’ve also got to pick up some Shell Rotella T synthetic oil and a filter so I can change the oil on the bike, along with some oil for the Focus. I don’t want to spend all weekend playing mechanic though, I want to have some fun! I wanted to go camping this weekend but that’s simply not feasible with my father’s sleep apnea. Not a big deal, maybe we’ll take him to Morikami or something. I’m just anxious for him to get here so I can start cooking tasty meals. I’ll be fixing grilled chorizo with halloumi, sausage stew with cabbage, grilled buffalo burgers, possibly some smoked Kingfish or monkfish and who knows what else! So many culinary delights, so little time.
Having said that, I need to get to bed, long day tomorrow!
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I had my last class on Monday for the last time in three weeks, going to be a nice break to have. Our midterm in Anthropology of Religion is the day we get back from Spring Break but that’s how scheduling goes. At least I’ve gotten my paper turned in and I feel confident about it. It won’t be a stellar grade but I feel like it was a good paper. Next week is the last Music History and Appreciation class and I can’t wait. I’m growing very beleaguered by the lower classmen. I keep trying to think if I was ever that bad when I was one but I really don’t think I was. I finally talked to Professor Joella about the overabundant side conversations that go on throughout class without his intervention. It’s very distracting for me and other students, I’m sure.
In bike-related news, I finally ordered my new Skid Lid helmet today along with some new NGK Iridium IX spark plugs and new Kuryakyn Wide levers. The levers should be a welcome addition to the less than comfortable stock brake and clutch lever and hopefully the plugs will even out some of the rough idle I’ve been having lately. My girlfriend is taking her MSF Beginner Rider Course in late March and I’m very excited for her. Maybe she’ll enjoy it enough to want a bike of her own and I can get a 750! Oh, how fun that would be.
As it’s almost 2am, I’m going to go to bed.
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